Matthew J. Hoffman

Data/Products

Simulating Transport of Plastic Pollution in the Great Lakes

(2016) Using currents from NOAA's operational forecast models, we simulated the input and transport of plastic pollution through the Great Lakes. This was the first attempt as a budget for the full Great Lakes system and the first estimates of both input and floating mass of plastic.

Here is video of simulated plastic particles entering and moving through Lake Erie in the simulation of the year 2009:

Notice how the particles are often pushed along the bottom shore of the Lake but the currents, which leads to higher concentrations along the US coast of Lake Erie. Lake Erie has some gyre structure in its average currents and particles can be seen clustering at certain points in the video, but strong wind events disrupt this pattern and prevent the accumulation of plastic in "garbage patches" as in seen in the oceans.

Here is another video showing simulated plastic particles entering and moving through Lake Michigan, also in 2009:

If using results from this study please cite the following paper: M.J. Hoffman and E. Hittinger. 2016. Inventory and transport of plastic debris in the Laurentian Great Lakes. Marine Pollution Bulletin. In Press.

Simulated Hyperspectral Aerial Video Dataset

(2016) DIRSIG simulated aerial video from a moving platform with moving vehicles. The hyperspectral frames can be downloaded along with the ground truth files for the vehicles. More information on the dataset and our work with it can be found here (citation below).